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Saturday, March 18, 2017

More Entranced by "Hidden Figures" After Every Frame

Everything is Hollywood and glossier than it really could have been when even their beater car was looking as pretty as it could be. Even so, the humanity pours from it and the actors who are cast as pricks (e.g. Sheldon from "Big Bang Theory," etc) are composites and don't exist as a single person so it's ok to hate them or at least regard them contemptuously.

Note: Sheldon (Jim Parsons) kills as Paul Stafford and it must have been a gas for him to switch to playing a hard guy like that.

The segment in the church which talked about advancement with their rocket women and their Colonel was beautiful.

The shootdown of the Colonel at the Sunday picnic was priceless.

It's a movie in which the cast is predominantly black but nothing feels contrived about it and the flow with the people in it feels genuine. White people are mostly one-dimensional but John Glenn got points when he went to greet the black women from NASA who were segregated to one side of the presentation area. That's still one-dimensional but it's a great dimension.

Kevin Costner is the most emotional white man in the movie which is a tad unusual and he got the big move with breaking down the color barrier in NASA. In reality, this scene did not happen but that seems ok since Ms Goble had been ignoring the sign anyway and it was years before anyone complained.

It still laid me flat when he broke down the sign. The scene is kind of iffy since it's the white man as the hero in breaking down segregation while the real story was she paid no attention to segregation and continued ignoring signs after whatever complaint was registered. Five-point toss-up on whether that matters but I see a bit of distortion in it.

Another tremendously emotional part is when Ms Jackson gets permission from the court to attend school to become an engineer but that didn't really happen. This has the same liability is the previous scene in which a white man grants the permission but, as a symbol, white men finally did when no-one else could. The beauty part is when she knows she can attend as it gives a small taste of what it feels like to gain access to education when previously you were not allowed to have it.

Even though various aspects in the movie didn't really happen, the overall progress was indisputable and there's one teary moment after the other watching it happen. I knew going into it which parts were Hollywood but it felt ok and the vibe from the movie was special. Taraji Henson is particularly endearing.

Most of the time, the movie plays it down but Taraji Henson is an exceptionally attractive woman.